Doomsday Clock at two minutes to midnight, atomic scientists say

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced the symbolic Doomsday Clock a notch closer to the end of humanity Thursday, moving it ahead by 30 seconds. It is now set at two minutes to “midnight.”

In moving the clock 30 seconds closer to the hour of the apocalypse, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists cited “the failure of President Trump and other world leaders to deal with looming threats of nuclear war and climate change.”

The organization now believes “the world is not only more dangerous now than it was a year ago; it is as threatening as it has been since World War II,” Bulletin officials Lawrence M. Krauss and Robert Rosner wrote in an op-ed published Thursday by The Washington Post. “In fact, the Doomsday Clock is as close to midnight today as it was in 1953, when Cold War fears perhaps reached their highest levels.”

Krauss, a theoretical physicist, and Rosner, an astrophysicist, added: “To call the world nuclear situation dire is to understate the danger — and its immediacy. North Korea’s nuclear weapons program appeared to make remarkable progress in 2017, increasing risks for itself, other countries in the region and the United States.”

The clock, a metaphorical measure of humankind’s proximity to global catastrophe, also advanced 30 seconds last year, to 2 ½ minutes to “midnight” — the closest to the apocalyptic hour it has been since 1953, after the United States tested its first thermonuclear device, followed months later by the Soviet Union’s hydrogen bomb test.